After four days of the schizophrenic Democratic convention, the last thing conservatives should think of doing is leaving the Republican Party. That would ensure Democratic victories for years to come.

While I deplore the Republican Party’s lack of conservative backbone, it can only be changed from within by dedicated conservatives willing to make the effort. Third parties can’t make it for one simple reason: They can’t raise the money needed to win elections. And that’s what politics is all about – winning elections.

I have been a member of both the Libertarian and Constitution parties. They are little more than ideological clubs (or ghettos) which make for great social occasions. Their leadership is comprised of decent, dedicated individuals who enjoy playing political games, much like miniature golf, which amount to little more than intellectual amusement rather than serious dollar-driven politics. They represent a new form of political amateur hour. If you think that conservatives are now frustrated with the Republican Party, wait until they get involved in third-party politics to find out what frustration is really like.

I don’t know any true conservative who believes that the Republican Party is above criticism. The president may not be a movement conservative, but certainly his vice president has strong conservative credentials. Political purity is not an option if you wish to win elections in today’s America. For conservative activists seeking political power, flexibility is a requirement.

At this time in our political history, reality must be the operative guide. Conservatives must realize that taking over the Republican Party is going to require much more effort than they have so far exerted. It means hanging tough, getting good young conservatives elected to Congress and state legislatures, educating the public, changing minds.

Conservatives face daunting problems. We live in a country where the vast majority of Christians still put their children in atheistic public schools, thus helping our secular-humanist monster create more dumbed-down, brainless American adults. The result is that we have a culturally divided country: a dominant secular-humanist culture, which owns the mass media, the universities, and the great foundations, and a less influential Christian culture with its own publishing houses, bookstores, and schools.

These two cultures exist in the same country, but have radically different and opposing values. And the conflict between these two cultures can be seen in the abortion debate, the gay-marriage debate, the school-prayer debate, the textbook debate, the Ten Commandments debate, the popular entertainment debate, the dating debate, the tattoo-and-body-piercing debate, the reading-instruction debate, the abstinence debate and so on.

The only political forum in which Christians have any effective influence is the Republican Party. To desert the GOP at this time is to commit political suicide. We have many admirable conservative leaders in the party at all levels of government and they need all the support we can give them. Our goal should be to elect more of them while getting rid of the liberals who call themselves Republicans. Much of the new conservative energy in politics is coming from the Christian homeschool movement.

I recently spoke at a Homeschool Conference at Bob Jones University on the subject of raising future Christian leaders. I compared our struggle to retake America with the struggle the Jews went through to retake the Holy Land. It took the Jews a hundred years to do it against tremendous unrelenting opposition. We want to retake America in one election.

We simply are too impatient and refuse to do the hard work the task requires. Let’s face it. It may take us a hundred years to retake America and we should be working at it every day, in every way. It wasn’t easy taking back the Holy Land. It won’t be easy taking back America.